


hard feelings. (these are what they call)

by unlit_day



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: F/M, I Made Myself Cry, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Bad At Titles, I'm confusing myself here, M/M, Sad Josh Dun, Sad Tyler Joseph, Written for a Class, everyones sad, i mean i do all the time but I'm a bitch for angst and sadness so, im bad at life tbh, its kind of sad, just sad, no longer a drabble, so i kind of decided to change things up and, tyler may or may not like have some kind of disease??, we had to do a love letter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-15 17:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12325875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unlit_day/pseuds/unlit_day
Summary: I loved you. You loved me. Then you loved her and you didn't love me. I love you.(def continued now and proud of it <3)





	1. our bodies are young and blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i miss us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i added a chapter title and summary

Now we're here, alone. Just us, sitting here, staring down at our drinks wondering why we even bother trying to be friends when "just friends" don't look at each other like that. When we give each other- nevermind.

Of course, there's a reason we're just friends. It's because we don't get along as lovers. Because we can just walk away and pretend it's nothing because it was never something. What we had was never anything, and it sucks that I'm just starting to realize that.

When you say "today I..." and I get to finish the sentence for you because I was there, it feels so right… But when we accidentally brush hands, or our cheeks touch when we hug, I feel so incomplete.   
Tell me, does she look at you like I look at you? Because if she does, obviously I've been wrong since day one. If she gets sparks in her body, starting at her fingertips when you look each other in the eyes, tell me the truth about it. Pour your heart and soul into my heartbreak so I can really move on.

If you don't, I never will so pardon me for my lack of excitement at your opposing excitement. You make me stutter when I talk, and when I walk, and now I feel like our moment together got killed by her malice. And I know, we’re kind of into each other, but if you love her there’s nothing left for me to be into. When you’re in a relationship, you give your all to each other. But I guess if we were together that short time before I had to leave you we were never truly together. And this isn’t a hate letter; just a letter to tell you how much I care about you, and how much it hurts to see you with somebody else. And when I heard you were with somebody else, I thought it was just a rumor at first, and I hate to picture you sitting next to and sharing that numbing world in your head with her.

I’m sorry I have to be so bitter, so immature, so everything, because I hate being bad to you, but I hate it more when you ignore everything I do to get your attention. I love you.

In a perfect world, maybe we’d be together and maybe we’d be made for each other. We’d lay out in the grass and hold hands, looking up at the stars in July to get a look at the planets. We’d kiss in the rain and look at each other in a way that speaks for itself.

Every day I’d make you something new, and I’d get over that stupid fear of showing my love in public. I’d get over not feeling good enough. And then we could stay together. But until then, I guess we can stay “just friends” if that’s what you really want.

I’d apologize for my behavior to you, but I absolutely shoot up with the scent of your perfume- or was it cologne?; at least I did that one time you wore it. If you paid a little more attention to me, maybe, I could be what you want me to be instead of following you around like a lost puppy begging for a home. It’s a shame you don’t have any room for me in your heart. It’s a shame you aren’t ready for us. It’s a shame we’re so distant.

I’m sorry for how much she hurt you. I love you. Do you love me? If you do… I don’t feel it.


	2. please, could you be tender?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorrysorrysorry

There are so many issues you dug your own heart into and buried, never to be spoken of again, I feel, only to see yourself in me and want to bask in the second-hand smoke of relief. All the time I've ever spent with you was wasted, all the love I ever showed you, it was all ignored. Even the calm I gave in the calamity was pushed away like you didn't even know my name. I don't think I've ever missed a person so much that I wanted to remove the bricks of the building they were in just to crawl through and touch them because I miss the feeling of their skin. 

I've never so badly felt as though I didn't feel enough due to the massive colored hole in my heart, the one I regularly have to patchwork. It's not surprising, just inconvenient to be so utterly empty and void of love; it hurts more than I'd like to admit. 

Every night I worry that I won't have the courage to get up in the morning and fix everything wrong in my life to make you happy. Have you ever thought of this, really? Perhaps it isn't me who's using you; it could very well be vice-versa. I am not one-sided. Jenna loves me much more than you truly do, considering every sign of affection I’d ever shown to use was just pushed away and treated like an irritating mistake. Your love for me is not as dear as you believe it is; simply you just crave to be loved and pampered, to be allowed superiority and dominance over a person’s every need and want and emotion and action. There are often times I cry myself to sleep just so that I can get some goddamn rest, a sliver of peace in the head. 

I wake up in my room alone, but I feel your warmth on my sheets before I realize I had dreamt about you. Again. A living hell, a constant state of anoesis where all I feel is lost, those precious moments in which I’m paralyzed and remembering what dreams I had of you. I have a favorite. The best is the one in where I steal you away and I make your hands twitch, take you by the wrist and sit upon the limbs of the willow branches while the sun dies off in the sky, clouds settling down and indigo falling on the sides of the horizon. It’s sad to know you’d never do this with me.

Ah, dead poets, are not we all secretly? Craving consciousness and affection from the one we care for dearest. I do.   
But what, dearest Joshua, would I say? I can’t even leave my room. I hardly move, do not soothe myself, rarely speak and it’s hard to see. I only think, but it’s too hard for me, that feeling of thinking too much.

Although it is only fair, I suppose, if I do not love you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, GOD I’M SORRY AND I DON’T KNOW WHY, I DID NOTHING TO BE SORRY AND I JUST FEEL WORSE WHEN I SAY IT. 

I love you. I’m sorry you don’t love me.


	3. i remember the rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tylertylertyler i miss. you. so much. do you miss me?

Still don't have an answer, Ty. Not an answer anywhere. Did you forget to send your letter? Did you not think of a response? Still don't feel it, that love. Never felt it I guess. I guess, maybe you cut my heart open for the sake of doing so. Oh, yes, you cut my heart right out of my chest and now I'll never feel again. Does that make you feel good? I don't want to do this, speaking like children over nothing, arguing like two kids who want the same toy, only it's a one-sided conversation and you aren't there; I'm talking to myself, aren't I Tyler?

You treat me like I spill dirt whenever I open my mouth. Like I'm a dead body of someone you used to know and love but now I'm just clouding up your air with dust and flies, drafting Emails that I'll never send to you or anyone else, yet though I'm dead you save my life every day with a simple "Hello," and a slight quirk of your lips. I consider dying to be easy, but here you are making sure I don't because "There's no easy way out for cowards; suicide is embarrassing." 

The whole city of Columbus is at your door, "Come on Tyler, we need you,"  
But they just need more money, more time, more love and sex and drugs and alcohol, and yet

Here you are giving me nothing and I still depend on you. All my desires are gone, all of my drawings are just doodles of your favorite flowers. I feel as though you've stolen my face just like you've stolen my heart; I know who took it, but I don't know who'll replace it, and I'm still alive but I have no perspective. 

When this letter is over, I can fall asleep sober. I've got plenty of love for you but no way to show it, in my wildest sexual dreams I'm watching a porn actor that looks like your doppelganger, but there's sunlight shining over my laptop and nothing is clear enough to see. 

I still don't feel you. I miss you, Tyler. Do you miss me? If you do, I don't feel it.


	4. right here in the cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> josh? josh? am i okay?
> 
> okay?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i edited the chapter and name of chapter bc im a dumbfuck and ilyyy

I haven't felt right in weeks, Josh.

I'm thinning, my head hurts, the room spins while I walk and eat and sleep and I can't breathe because there's not enough oxygen in the air of my current residence. They kicked me out last week, said I was making them crazy with how negative I am. It hurts so bad I'm scared there's something wrong. 

I want to go back. To when we first met, to when you and I were okay and we didn't give each other filthy looks from across the room; when I was your best friend and you were my reason to live. I can't find it anymore, that will to stay alive and get out of bed. I haven't eaten for 3 days because I don't have the energy to pick up the phone or go to the store or do anything in general. All of my remaining energy is in the ink of this letter. When you get it, you will feel it, if I finish writing before I pass out. 

I've been having fever dreams about you, where we rock back and forth on your mother's porch swing and you catch fireflies in the weeds of the unkempt garden where we'd play as boys, where we were happy and we sipped lemonade and threw stones at each other because we were dumb and mean. I'm not just hot-headed from the fever, though, because Jenna came in yesterday to check up on me and I chewed her and spat her right out. I don't do good without you. I'm slipping into a funk where all I do is fall apart over you. 

I'm going to spend the entire year and the one after this and the ones the rest of my sad life just face down and empty, wasting my time because everybody else is using theirs up productively; why should I, someone so insignificant, be the same? I will ask myself,

"Is this who you are, Tyler?"

But I wouldn't ever know. I haven't yet, I never will. I don't think there's anything wrong. The sun shines, the rain pours, the weather changes and it's all the same. I feel it all on the backs of my arms and hands and legs, my whole body is one with the weather, and I have all the time in the world.

Something is definitely wrong. Am I okay? Are you okay?

Josh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how ya doin?


	5. lets give this a minute before we admit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> whats going on with you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> four chapters more and its done i think

I haven't seen you in a while. I'm starting to really worry about you. The other day, Jenna came into my room looking like she'd seen the devil himself, saying that you were going crazy. Is that true? Are you even getting my letters?

It's been so long since you looked healthy that I don't think it's emotional anymore. Jenna, even though I hate her, is my only way of getting close to you. She took a picture of you two weeks ago and you were so pale, so chap-lipped and glassy-eyed that I thought you were dead. Dead inside, or dead outside? What's going on, Tyler?

I thought I maybe would've had a letter back by now. But there's nothing, and maybe you have them, maybe you don't, maybe you just hate talking to me. Not sure right now. What's it like, being alone in your room? How do you feel?

I just need to know you're okay. I'm sorry I'm clingy and stupid but I just love you and miss you and I'm worried about you. 

Are you alright Ty? I'm not. I miss you. I need you.


	6. our love is a ghost, i guess i should go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i dont want to give up on this. but i might.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUCK PLEASE DONT BE MAD also three chaps today woooooo inspiration!!!

Today you looked at me. Today is the first day I came out of my room. You told me to describe my current thoughts about myself, my personality, everything.

I am a hermit and private individual, two-faced if you will. It is very difficult for me to open up to generally anyone, not just strangers. I act open-minded and positive in public while privately being hopeless and fearful of life. I think a lot about my existence and why I exist, which leads to panic. It's unintentional for me but it has become such a bad habit that I'm starting to believe that my brain has it hard-wired that I should panic constantly. I often repress myself and feel vulnerable and stupid. I fake confidence to feel happy only to regret it at the end of the day, and it's the insecurity that I possess is what makes me so versatile in other situations; an ability where I can act assured and empathetic on the outside, enthusiastic and focused, admiring others and knowing exactly what I want and need, while feeling small and useless on the inside, inferior and selfish, depressing and unimportant.

I am more observant and act on what is best in the situation, stopping to make a decision. My personality makes me overly-sensitive, impatient, snappy and aggressive, and more often than not, I get overwhelmed to the point where I crumple down and break my own promises to "better myself" and remember that I am just like every other human being. I've noticed I do my best to comfort others, and it is my high point, but I also have a difficulty understanding myself and my own emotions. 

I rarely partake in self-gratification and prefer to just ignore and find my desires or needs annoying. It's strange, I suppose. This came out much lengthier than I wanted it to, so sorry about that. I will explain my personal strengths and weaknesses. My strong points are empathy and contemplative thought-process. Problems about that? I tend to get overly emotional and think too much, which takes quite a toll on my mental and emotional states. I would've put four strong points, but I literally only have two. I am a leech to everyone around me, and invade your existence with my worrying, leaving you guilt-tripped until you take care of me; by that I mean cut me off. 

I know for a fact that I am anxious enough to make other people around me anxious, and I weigh them down with it. It's why I'm hiding. I always do my best to make my "friends" happy, but... I guess trying is lying and my best isn't good enough because they always find better people and leave me. It's better to just turn your back on me. I wouldn't want to hurt anyone by letting them hurt me; they don't deserve the guilt I would give them. You don't deserve the guilt I give you. It's too often that I wonder why I even bother writing anymore. 

I've been so sick, Josh. I've been throwing up and coughing and hallucinating, for God's sake. I think about you more than I think about life, how I feel, how to feel, how do you want me to feel? There are so many things wrong. That I can barely leave my room, that I find it hard to breathe, how anxious I get. 

I miss you so damn bad. 

Why did you want me to do this? Will I even give it to you? I've been asking myself all night, coming up with reasons and rational answers even if they aren't really all that rational. God, what I would give to live happily. Since I got sick, every day's been the same; wake up, throw up, get down, lie down. I feel so useless, waiting on another useless day to end. 

Sometimes I manage to get up enough and look in the mirror, and I swear it's someone else in the reflection, someone I'm not, someone who's taken me over and turned me into this. I've waited my whole life for a difference in my appearance, but I guess they say "be careful what you wish for." I should know better than that. 

It's easier to hide away in my room and never come out than to let everything eat me away, spend the rest of my life waiting on something, let it cut me down and drag me across the floor of life before tossing me away like nothing.

I'm looking death right in the face, and I used to with so badly for it, but I'm not thanking him because there's nothing in death for me and there never will be and in the gravel sidewalks and metal skyscrapers and the generic light of the city I'll never find anything. What's the use? I'll stay away and stop bothering everyone. 

I miss you. I love you. I need you, and I'm getting worse.


	7. when the sweet words and fevers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i dont think ive ever been so worried in my life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM BACK FUCKERS
> 
> i was gone because i skipped uni a bit for self-care breaks, but im back and im writing and heyyyy a new chapter
> 
> its probably really choppy because i purposefully made it that way, wanting it to look anxious and shit so yeah here you go :--)

Tyler. Oh, fuck, Tyler. I don't know what's wrong with me. 

There are so many reasons I should be hating you and every fiber of your being, hate you and every part of you- yet here I am, wishing your body was against mine, wishing you were as safe as you deserve to be, wishing I could make everything better for you. You are so delicate and lovable, but goddamn, you're such a poison to me. I have a feeling that you aren't having the feelings you should be. 

That scares me. 

That really, really scares me. 

The thought of you being sad and angry and confused and disappointed and just negative makes me want to tie a noose out of your favorite flowers and burn it right in front of you, knowing your destructive tendencies. I want to make you feel like you are important, make you believe it. You are so special and unique, so ethereal, so perfect that it's ungodly. The parts of me that know better and know how you play your games are screaming at my protective side, knowing that I will push away anything for you. Hunger, thirst, tiredness, emotion, fatigue, heat, cold, weather, rationality, none of it can go against how badly I need you to be stable.

Now, I know what you're thinking; "it's not that bad." Yes, it is, shut up. 

I understand what you don't. I have such a great want to understand what you know I don't understand, and what I don't understand is why you won't talk to me and that's why I'm jumping from thought to thought so fast because I'm frazzled over the way you refuse to acknowledge my existence. You only ever do that when you're repressing yourself. When you repress yourself you isolate yourself and hide away from not just me but everybody and I can't stand it anymore because I care about you so fucking much that they had to put me on an anxiety medicine and I know that sounds illogical but you worry me to the point that I am freaking out. 

It makes me feel useless. God, yeah. 

Jenna promised she'd drop this off for you. Please, Tyler, respond so that I know you're not dead or planning to be. I can't take this. I love you so damn much. 

I really do. I know you love me, because yes.  
I can feel it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading <3 kudos and feedback are appreciated!!


	8. i call from underwater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so, you told me this was a good idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TYLER STARTING TO WRITE HIS POETRY AND NOW HES GETTING SICKER BUT WHO DOESNT NEED TO KNOW?
> 
> THATS RIGHT.
> 
> JOSH DOESNT.

I haven’t written in a while out of fear that I’d write too much and expose exactly how I feel. But I decided to try, like, poetry, maybe. I just. Yeah. I hope you get this. I hope you like it.

Because it's important for my tired eyes and anxious cries and my mouth feeling full of dirty lies, for my aching feet and uncomfortable seat and my stomach screaming for something to eat, for my oily hair and skin too fair and my mind not open enough to share, for my jagged nails and academic fails and my creativity going stale, for my worn-out bones and pitiful groans and for the fact that I feel so alone. 

My body is not willingly walking, my mouth is not willingly talking, my hands are not willingly knocking on wood but I know that I should and that’s why I shouldn’t, because everything I say and do is nothing if it can’t help you, nothing to compare to how often I feel bare and true, nothing to aware me that the reason I’m so scared is the reason I’m not drowning, the reason I’m still frowning rather than dead and not hanging by a thread, yet I’m filled with so much dread and I want my worst words to be read, but I’m still nervous of reaction, made of dissatisfaction and I hate that I can’t help attraction towards all of my distractions. 

The migraine I have is a fine grain of sand in my brain and I feign to be plain, waiting in vain to be less than a drain towards society and my anxiety is much less than at variety and I’m trying to sleep but I keep feeling cheap and I’m in too deep, way over the limit of my neck, I’m a wreck and I don’t want to check if I double-checked it doesn’t affect any aspect that I managed to collect to just maybe connect to someone perfect and be somewhat correct and not a deject, and I just want respect but I know I expect too much and I’m entitled to neglect, but it’s fine. 

We’re all good. I just need a little time to myself and I’ll be happy. I miss you a lot. I know I'm a little idiot, but it's a bad habit. I hope your meds are working, cuz it takes a bit for them to set in. I love you. I hope you know I'm trying my best to stop.

It's hard, though. 

Will you come see me tomorrow, Josh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :^)


	9. the waves come after midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> do you know how dear you are to me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AIGHT SO  
> next chapter they meet and i think ill put it in an out of letter context, so like
> 
> they talk to each other and stuff
> 
> anyway, like, josh is a silly lil bean in this one and he wants to get to tyguy but
> 
> he ALSO implies
> 
> he wants to GET to tyjo ;)

Tyler. I got your letter. 

It was absolutely beautiful. 

And I realized exactly how long it's been since we've seen each other face-to-face and actually spoke. Know this: the show ain't over. But why are you so sad, huh? I don't understand. My medicine kicked in like you hoped, and I just feel so much damn better. Oh, but don't worry; I still do. Worry. Yeah.

I want to see you so badly, and I would've come the day I got your letter, but I was drowning in homework (who am I kidding, I still am) up to my neck. I found it comforting in a way; the way that says after I finish all of this useless trash I can run over to you and hug you and hold you and cuddle you like I mean it, cause I do. But there's a problem. 

My brain is a bedroom, and it's messy as hell. I can hardly walk through the piles of garbage and clothes because they're off into the distance, and I'm just trying to get to the bed because that's headquarters and more importantly (fuck HQ) you're. Sleeping. In. That. Bed. It's where you are, and I need you. The two of us, two boys, two best friends, two potential-lovers and our smooth together adventures, just wanting to be one. Us, Tyler! Together again! Imagine it. 

Now that I think about it, that was a pretty bad idea. I said that was the problem and yet, it sounds so wonderfully nice, and now I just want that. To walk off into the sun with you, to make memories more and make other things perhaps, we're just having fun. 

I have a strange craving to be connected to you by the backs of our heads. Get a conduit, make our minds the same; maybe then I could just know what you wanted, know what you needed and we wouldn't have to fuck around. I miss you dearly.

Oh, and yes.

I will come see you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so like feedback pls and thank you and i love you but also i want to know if i should put next chap in that context u dig?


	10. when forever was us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's always just one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok hi so this was meant to be real-life and they were supposed to talk but 
> 
> INSTEAD, poetic fluff just flew out of my ass and onto the screen
> 
> feedback pls :--)

Tyler loves him. God, he loves him so much. He wants to hold him and cuddle him and he isn't afraid to say that he definitely wants to kiss him even though that's technically cheating on Jenna but who cares? It doesn't even matter anymore. 

So Tyler waits in his room for Josh and taps his foot, hums a little tune that he though to earlier to remember it. 

It's about eighteen more minutes before Josh walks through that door, eighteen more minutes that Tyler gets more and more hopeless that he won't come and was just fucking with his feelings, but Josh comes. He walks through the door like he owns the place and the first thing he does is stare at Tyler for a good forty-five seconds and maybe Josh's eyes start to water and maybe Tyler feels himself choke up and maybe they both feel bad and sorry and stupid even though they shouldn't. 

Nevertheless, Josh holds Tyler, Tyler holds Josh, two souls intertwining and two bodies melting together akin to the sun hitting the snow. Two hearts holding hands, two minds thinking alike, two, two, two two two twotwotwotwo

One. One soul. One body. One heart. One mind. Josh isn't just hearing Tyler's thoughts, he's feeling them and breathing them and adding to them and it's- it's. 

A mood, then, for one. Something like shame. Something like pride. Something like fear. A mattress with translucent sheets, soaking wet on the shore of a secluded place somewhere in the heart of the universe, blankets sopping and pillows unstuffed, yet somehow still afloat, together, capable and strong within weakness and helplessness.

The mood is recognized as love. 

No one needs to talk because the lights are on, they know what they see, they're a mess, they know what they are. Talking would destroy this: the sensation of one, togetherness. It will be destroyed by unnecessary actions, including talking. Besides; why talk when you could hear each other in your heads?

It sounds a bit too poetic; maybe cliche, maybe over-dramatic. Truth is, that's just about right... but who would have it any other way?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a thing
> 
> this exists


End file.
